by Dwayne Phillips
What was impossible at one point in the past, often is now possible. What is impossible today will probably possible in the future. Change the conversation by replacing “impossible” with a phrase.
What is impossible these days?
- Curing the common cold
- Finding politicians who are candid about their proposals
- An efficient government
- Any efficient group of people with more than three members
- A car that achieves 100 miles per gallon on gasoline without batteries
- A trillion transistors on a single chip
- A working computer program with 100 million lines of code
- and so on…
I find that the label “impossible” limits thinking. Why try to find a way for a large group of people to be efficient? It is impossible, so forget about it. The same question could be asked about the other items in my list. The same question could be asked about a thousand and one items that I didn’t list.
Forty years ago it was impossible to put a million transistors on one computer chip. Twenty years ago that was no longer impossible as someone learned how to do it. Fifty years ago it was impossible to write a computer program with a million lines of code that worked as promised. Again, someone learned how to do that.
Try this exercise: every time you see or hear the word “impossible,” replace it with “not yet known how.”
For examples,
- It is impossible to put a trillion transistors on a single chip
- It is not yet known how to put a trillion transistors on a single chip
- It is impossible to cure the common cold
- It is not yet known how to cure the common cold
- It is impossible to grow enough food to feed ten billion people on planet earth
- It is not yet known how to grow enough food to feed ten billion people on planet earth
- It is impossible to sustain our lifestyle without depleting the planet of energy resources
- It is not yet known how to sustain our lifestyle without depleting the planet of energy resources
I think that using the “not yet known how” phrase spurs thinking. Try it.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Brian Crook // Dec 2, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Last time, I composed a 80 or 100 word comment, but the force was not with me and I lost the whole business. So this is a test …
2 Brian Crook // Dec 5, 2009 at 9:19 pm
There are several flavors of “impossible”. Political, economic, physical, statistical, etc.
When the auto engineers told the beancounters what it would cost to build cars that burn less gas, the beancounters said “impossible”. Then along came CAFE, and the” impossible” became mandatory. And creative accounting won another one.
Now we’re talking 100 mpg. I haven’t modeled it, but this just may bump up against the fact that there is just so much thermal energy in a gallon of gas and that may not be enough to propel a real car that people will buy, not a toy, at speeds and distances that the buyers expect. Even at 100% efficiency.
Likewise with printed circuits. I don’t think that someone will discover how to make a conductor smaller than a metal atom. Not anytime soon. Hence we are approaching a limit to the density of printed circuits.
And here’s another “impossible”. Political pressures have made it very difficult to drill for oil in the US. But what if we were to find an excuse to go to war with, say, Saudi? We win, and by treaty, Saudi becomes a US terrirory and eventually a state. Voila! A bunch of “foreign” oil becomes domestic, with a huge drop in our dependence on oil imports.
Remember, you heard it here first!
3 Dwayne // Dec 6, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Printed circuit board smaller than a metal atom? Split that atom into smaller metal pieces. It is not yet known how to do that.
4 Brian Crook // Dec 7, 2009 at 10:25 pm
“Split that atom into smaller metal pieces.”
If you “split” the atom, you will get atoms of a different element, which may or not be conductive. Or you will get a cloud of subatomic particles. At least according to current understanding of atomic physics. Not coming to a computer store near you any time soon.
Warp factor 8, Mr. Sulu. Not without more dilithium crystals, Captain. Good God, Jim! Beam me up, Scotty.
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